As children, we set our backs against the open palm
of the midway hill. In an effort to become alike, you kicked
your legs in circles about the sky as I solemnly claimed
The pursuit of motion is futile. Don't kick.

Four months of alienation will produce four years worth
of thoughts developing. Elder thoughts with fingertips
pruned by the warm marrow of ink wells. Thoughts with

the ability to mold beliefs; to rinse misconceptions
from the jaw and construct a lattice of docility within
the feminine rotation of a wrist raised by six brothers.

Two women are changed, too weary to change anew.
I sense your legs have fallen still. If you would only kick
next to me now, I would fervently attest

We are dimensions:
pulsing collapsing expanding.
The skin of our bare arms contracts and lets go.
New skin erupts-
thicker, kinder maybe, but new and clinging.
The features of our faces reform.
The structure of our bones implode,
casting ripples across the surface
of skin that ebbs incessantly.
I grab for center with the withered hands
of a woman worn by trying; at the age
of seventeen I am tried.

We cannot stay the same:

are shaped by the vapors that press.
The vapors of you and our united separation.

I ask Give me rest.
They have not ears.

And they press me.